Improving my SQL skills through your questions!

OK, I’m not normally the one to blog a lot of personal stuff but there’s definitely a reason for a lot of my silence over the past couple of months……. I was planning a wedding. OK, Paul helped out more than you would expect – he met with the officiant (Annemarie of Annemarie Juhlian), the photographer (John Mitchell of John Mark Photography), the ceremony/reception venue (the Woodmark Hotel), the florist (Nathan of Fena Flowers), the amazing baker (Mike’s Amazing Cakes) and Paul did so much more too! So, I can’t say it was all me but that’s the excuse I’m using (for my lack of blogging :) and I’m sticking to it! It was a crazy amount of work in general and now I can truly understand why people hire wedding coordinators!!

Anyway, the weekend could NOT have gone better. So many of our friends and family were able to make it – even our one remaining Grandmother (Doris McDonnell, my Father’s Mother – who is 84) made the journey out here. Which, btw, was no small feat for her… it was a train to my Mother’s house to spend the night, then together they took a train to Chicago’s grand central station where they then caught a cab to O’Hare to catch a 4 hour flight to Seattle. And, that was a fairly short flight compared to Goksin Bakir’s flight(s) from Istanbul, Gunther Beersaerts’ flight(s) from Belgium, Olga Londer’s flights from London, Paul’s entire family from Glasgow, Scotland, the Tripp/Fussell/Bostick clan’s flight(s) from Tampa, Carl Franklin’s flight(s) from Connecticut and Richard Campbell’s drive down from Vancouver (ok, that was short compared to Peter Bennett’s drive from Racine, Wisconsin). And, of course, we had many of the usual suspects: Bob Beauchemin, Brian Randell, Clemens Vasters, Euan Garden, Gert Drapers, Gunther Beersaerts, Juval Lowy, Liz Vitt, Matt Nunn, Michele Leroux Bustamante, and last, but not least, Timmie Huckaby. And, those were only a few of the more public geeks :) :). Speaking of public… I’m *very* afraid of the recorder that Carl (of the infamousDNR) had running during the late night hours of the BBQ on Friday night.

Speaking of the BBQ, here’s our favorite photo (so far!) from the BBQ on Friday.

Paul already blogged our favorite (so far!) from the wedding. Oh, and why only “so far?”… John took over 40GB of photos from the weekend (the BBQ was on the 27th and the wedding was on the 29th). We cannot wait to see all of what he’s done. There are photos that we’ve seen now that show us that we never even knew he/they (John/Katie/Boon) were there…capturing moments rather than just posed shots. With how fun, professional, timely and creative they were – it’s obvious that they all love what they do. In fact, John feels more like a friend than a vendor. It was truly a pleasure having them attend the wedding…and not just for the photos!

So, I thought I’d blog a tad of the personal stuff today and let you know about the best SQL union of which I’m aware <g>… we look forward to all of the exciting things that SQLskills will be doing as we move forward with Paul coming over from the Microsoft mothership as “Managing Director” starting on September 1st. Stay tuned with us as I know good things are still yet to come.